"You think that was a good idea? To go with them?" Riley asked and made her bed. Abby was sitting on her bed on her side of the bed platform.
"They needed help. Figure if we're here, we might as well pay their kindness back, y'know?" Abby replied, playing with a Rubik's cube Jacob had given her. "Also, it's probably good if we know some other places around here. To teleport."
"If we need to teleport away from here, I don't think we can take everyone. You can do three people, max, and I don't know if I can do the same."
"So you're suggesting what?" Abby turned a side of the cube and within a few more moves, she had solved two sides of it.
Riley shrugged. "Not suggesting anything. But if we need to run... we'll have some decisions to make."
"Oh, speaking of." She turned the cube again and another side was solved. "USGS is in town."
The colour drained from Riley's face almost instantly. "What?"
"They set up shop in the Northern Hotel in Keystone. The owner of the general store told us."
"Not good. Not good." Riley mumbled and climbed down the stairs to pick up her log from the table. She opened it and pulled out a stack of folded papers, all with USGS marks.
"What's that?"
"Notes. Readings. Print-outs. All from dad. I took them before I left for your place."
"We should show these to the others" Abby said and put down the half-solved cube.
"Are you nuts? We don't know if-"
"-if we can trust them, blah blah. I trust them, okay? I trust Sadie, I trust Jake, I trust Marigold."
"...We could show them to Sadie, I guess."
Sadie was doing laundry in her treehouse as Abby and Riley entered. She pulled one article of clothing out of the pail at a time, then bunched it up in her hands and heated it up until all the water flash-vaporised out of the fabric. Then, she put it on the dining table, ran over it with the side of her palm, immediately ironing it.
"This a bad time?" Riley asked. Sadie looked up.
"Nope" she answered and folded the pair of pants on the table. "What's up?"
"I've... decided that I'm going to stay. At least for a little while."
"I'm glad. You're welcome to help us with grocery runs, or-"
"I have something to show you." Riley interrupted her. "We... ran away from home because my dad is hunting people like us. People who can speak French."
"French?"
"She means people with powers." Abby translated, but Sadie was still a little confused.
"He works for the government, and-" Riley was interrupted by the door opening. Jacob and Jean-Paul. Great, now Riley would definitely not be able to keep it between Sadie and her.
"Who's working for the government?"
"Her father" JP answered. "And she's stolen some classified files from his study."
"JP!" Sadie called out. "She was going to tell us that at her own pace."
Riley glanced over at him, and sighed. "Yes. I have some of his files, and I think you should know about them." She opened her logbook and pulled out the stack of papers, placing them on the table, next to Sadie's clothes. She spread all of them out, and pulled her iPod out and played the recording for them. Researcher Allen Truman spoke again - After the presidents he thought he was done, Utah was off the table, who knows what Riley was capable of.
"There." She put her player back in her pocket.
"The presidents?" JP asked. "What'd he mean by that?"
"Maybe they had a top secret project. For the white house." Sadie said. "This agency, the-"
"Unites States Government Secrets." Riley said and Jacob laughed. "What?"
"That's... not what that stands for." He grinned and picked up one of the papers.
"I think I'd know that more than you. They're a top secret-"
"Riley, they're rock nerds. USGS stands for United States Geological Survey. Your dad is a geologist with an NDA."
"What? No. That... can't be." Riley looked through the papers and found a printout on graph paper - lines, going up and down, stacked on top of one another. The top of the diagram, the words Polyline Reading JSFB EHZ NC, Menlo Park Site. "That, it says right there, polygraph readings. Lie detectors. They were interrogating people like us-"
"That's a seismograph reading. They're measuring earthquakes. Ever heard of the Bay Area Big One?" He took another piece of paper and turned it on its side. "This one is from Milagra Ridge, in Pacifica. Your dad hunts earthquakes, not people."
"No." Riley shook her head. "If that's the case, what is he talking about on the recording? Utah being off limits?"
"Utah is where their headquarters are. And if they're asking him to go there, he probably doesn't want to go there since, y'know, his daughter is missing."
"That's..." Riley became red, staring at the readings and memorandums spread out on the table in front of her. "Is he really just-"
"Your dad is just a regular scientist." Jacob nodded. "You have nothing to worry about."
"I..." Riley fell onto one of the chairs and rubbed her eyes with her palms. "I feel like a huge idiot. I... ran away for no reason."
"And almost killed yourself and Abby." Jean-Paul added and earned angry stares from Sadie and Riley.
"Not helping, JP." Sadie turned to Riley. "Riley, look at me."
Riley kept her face buried in her hands, but Sadie continued anyway. "You were scared. You saw something you didn't understand, and your brain filled in the gaps with the worst possible scenario. That's... that's normal. And nobody would blame you for it."
"Normal?" Riley laughed bitterly. "I stole classified documents, ran away from home, dragged my only friend across state lines, all because I couldn't just ask my dad what he actually did for work?"
"Well... he might not have been able to tell you anyways." Jacob picked up another printout.
"What do you mean?"
"This is a reading from here. Keystone, SD." He pointed at a seismogram, this one having small but consistent lines, perfectly symmetrical.
"So what? Small earthquake, happens all the time." Abby said and put her arm around Riley's shoulder, who was still burying her face in her palms.
"In San Francisco, yes, but not here. South Dakota is not on a fault line. And, I mean, I'm not a geologist, but I don't think these are supposed to be perfectly symmetrical."
"What are you saying?" Riley looked up, her eyes red, but a little hopeful.
"I'm saying your dad might not have been hunting us, but he was definitely investigating... something."
Sadie took the reading out of Jacob's hands. "When were these taken?"
"1998. Fourteen years ago."
"98?" Riley asked. "...it's a long shot, but... Second of July?"
Jacob nodded. "How did you know?"
"This is... just too much." Riley said and got up from the table. "I need a walk. Need to get my mind off of this... this-" She shook her head. "Just need to clear my head."
She left everything on the table, including her logbook, and climbed down the rope ladder onto the clearing. The wind had picked up, but at least it wasn't raining at the moment. The ground was still marshy.
The trees swayed in the wind as Riley walked, not really paying attention to where she was going. Her mind was racing, trying to piece together everything she'd just learned. Her father wasn't some shadowy government agent hunting powered people. He was just... a scientist. A scientist who'd been studying something strange at Mount Rushmore, something that happened the day she was born. Something so secret he couldn't tell anyone about it, something that must've frightened him so much he moved to the other side of the country.
"I can practically hear you think."
Riley looked up. She'd wandered to the base of Autumn's treehouse without realising it. About ten feet up, Autumn was floating cross-legged in the air, reading a book suspended in front of her.
"Sorry" Riley said. "I'll go somewhere else-"
"You can stay." Autumn had a bookmark hover into her book, closed it and put it away without ever touching it. "Wanna come up?"
Riley nodded, and before she could start climbing up the rope ladder, she felt herself being lifted off the ground. The sensation was strange - she wasn't flying, it was more like the concept of "down" was suspended temporarily. Autumn guided her up, gently tracing her path in the air with her hand until they were both at the same height.
"Show-off" Riley said, but smiled.
"Come on, you don't wanna scramble up that ladder. It's... undignified." She leaned back a little. "So your dad is not who you thought he was."
"You can read minds too, now?"
"Just a hunch. I didn't buy the whole secret agent dad thing anyways."
"I did." Riley said and looked away. "And I dragged Abby along with me."
"Wanna talk about it?"
"Not really." Riley looked out over the forest. From up here, she could see why Autumn spent so much time in her treehouse. The view was incredible, even with storm clouds gathering in the distance. "But... maybe I need to."
Autumn let Riley gather her thoughts, and gently lifted both of them up to her treehouse platform. Once there, she brewed and entire pot of tea without looking and floated two cups over to them. "Here. Drink."
"Thanks." Riley took the cup. "I... I spent a long time being afraid of him. This whole... conspiracy in my head. And then I find out he's just... a geologist. He likes rocks." She took a sip from the tea and placed it in mid-air. "I feel like such an idiot. Stupid."
"Fear's not stupid. Neither is trying to protect yourself."
"But I was wrong! I was wrong, and I nearly killed Abby. And myself."
"Were you, though?" Autumn's dark eyes fixed on Riley. "Your father was studying something here. Something that happened on the day you were born. Not exactly nothing."
"You heard all that?"
Autumn shrugged. "Sound carries up here." Riley pulled her knees up to her chest, still floating in Autumn's gravity field, her cup next to her.
"I just... don't know what to think. About any of this. Should I just go back to SF? I mean, my dad must be worried sick, but- I also don't wanna leave you-"
"Me?"
Riley blushed hard, and hoped to god that Autumn didn't notice. "I- I mean you all. Sadie has a point, we should stick together, and-" She threw herself back, and the gravity field caught her. She was lying down, looking up at the sky, floating in mid-air. "I just don't know."
"So don't think." Autumn made a subtle gesture and Riley gently rotated until she was looking at the stone presidents in the distance. Their faces were partially obscured by the gathering storm clouds, but there was... something else. A strange shimmer around Roosevelt's head, like mirages rising from the road on a hot day.
"What's... that?"
"Don't know. He does that sometimes. But point is, when I got here, I couldn't control my power too well. Barely could control myself and another thing, let alone an entire camp. Kept rocks in my pockets to stay on the ground. Didn't want to... seem weird."
"So what changed?"
"Sadie. She built me this place. Said that if I was gonna float around, might as well do it with a view."
"I... don't think I follow."
Autumn sighed. "We all have something that makes us... different, obviously. But that's not bad. Different is not bad. It just means we need time to adapt. Some take more time, some take less."
"You?"
"More."
"How'd you... find out?"
Autumn was quiet for so long Riley thought she wouldn't answer. Finally, she started talking again. "When I first discovered what I could do, I thought I was going insane. Things would just... stop falling. My bedroom became a mess of floating objects. Couldn't sleep because I kept lifting off the bed. My parents didn't understand, of course. I mean, why would they."
She gestured, and their tea cups began to orbit each other slowly. "They tried their best. Sent me to doctors, therapists. But how do you explain to someone that gravity just... doesn't work right around you?"
"So you... left?"
"Not exactly." Autumn's face darkened, and she didn't look like she was going to explain. "Rather not talk about it."
Riley nodded knowingly. "That's okay." Riley looked out on the park, the wind playing with her hair. Autumn sat Riley down on the edge of the platform and joined her. She did what she did best - watch. Eventually, Riley scooted a little closer to her. For warmth, of course. Autumn's gaze was locked onto the monument, more specifically, the viewing platform in front of it. Riley gently leaned against her.
A pair of binoculars floated out of her treehouse window and in front of Autumn's eyes. She grabbed hold of them and adjusted the lenses.
"See anything?" Riley asked. Autumn didn't answer. She was laser focused. Riley didn't mind, and just leaned against her a little more. "Rangers, maybe?"
"Too many of them. And they're not moving like rangers."
"USGS?"
"Probably." She handed Riley the binoculars. Riley looked through them - men in khaki uniforms, unloading familiar equipment out of black SUVs. Seismographs, like in Riley's garage, but also different devices. Inverted umbrellas on tripods, pointed at the mountain.
"Definitely them." She gave the binoculars back. "What do we do?"
"We watch and we wait."
Thunder growled in the distance. Another storm was coming, and from what Jacob had said earlier, it was going to be worse than the one last night.
"You should go down to the others. To your treehouse. It's going to get ugly up here in the storm."
"I'd... rather stay."
"The tree is going to shake, and I can't hold a null field for very long. I don't think you should."
"And leave you up here alone?" She responded. "That can't be pleasant either."
"Someone's gotta keep watch." Riley blushed. She didn't want to let Autumn be all by herself in a bad storm, and she certainly didn't want to go back down and pretend she was all cool and collected with Abby.
"If I... promise not to get on your nerves, can I stay up here for the night? Keep you company?"
Autumn looked over at her. Her expression was completely inscrutable. "Keep me company?"
"I... just if you want, of course." Autumn's eyes narrowed, and she looked through the binoculars again without answering. What were only seconds of silence turned to agonising hours in Riley's mind.
"If you want, be my guest." Autumn finally said. Riley leaned against her shoulder again.
"A real sleepover."
"Never had one of those." Autumn admitted.
"Really? Never?"
"Never. Didn't have many friends in Seoul." Another moment of painful silence passed, but then she opened up. "What... do you do during those?"
"I... don't know either." Riley replied. The sky was getting darker, and she looked down the platform onto the other treehouses, which were brightly lit and warm, inviting. "But I know someone who might."